The End of Mr. Y

by Scarlett Thomas

  As I parked in the Russell car park I felt much as though I had just been given a life sentence. When I'd been a teenager I'd fantasized about the life of a tragic hero. I'd thought there would be some sort of glamour in being Hamlet, or Lear. But now I could see death at the end; I could see it with more certainty than I could see tomorrow. I remembered a dissertation that I'd marked a couple of years before. In it, the student argued that American eighties and nineties gangster films are postmodern tragedies. He spent a lot of time on one detail: that no one in these gangster films ever escapes. In our society—connected up with bits and bytes—you can never become entirely anonymous. At that moment I realized that the Project Starlight men would track me down, wherever I went, and take what I knew. They were going to rape my mind, and there was nothing I could do about it. I also realized that I had one slim chance of preventing this. I could disappear now. But I didn't have much time. They'd come here next: I knew that.

  It was too dangerous to wait for empirical evidence of what they were going to do. I had to work from a priori assumptions, namely:

  –The men wanted my knowledge of the ingredients for the mixture.

  –The men could get my knowledge in three different ways:

  –Torture

  –Pedesis

  –Taking the sheet of paper from me by force

  I reasoned that I could eat the paper, or not give in to torture, but I could do nothing about Pedesis. What I knew of the logic of the Troposphere suggested that in order to get into my mind the man in the Troposphere would only have to jump into the mind of someone near me, or likely to see me, and then, at the moment this other person saw me, make the final jump into my mind and all my knowledge and memories. In theory, the sleeping man could simply get into the mind of his colleague and send him to see me.

  So I couldn't let anyone see me. Once in my office I closed the blinds and the curtains and locked the door. I hadn't smoked for twenty years, but when I saw that Ariel had left a box of cigarettes on her desk I took one out and lit it. I pleaded with myself to find some way out of this situation. Where could I go where no one would see me? My mind filled with images of roads and shopping centers and supermarkets. On a usual day, how many people would see me? Hundreds? Thousands? Everywhere I cast my mind I saw these blobs of flesh-and-consciousness; the detail that is always left off any map. Even if I got back in my car and drove, I would travel past people. I wondered why I had even come to the university; why I had chosen as my hiding place a room with my name on the door, a room whose details can be found on the university Web site, which also contains handy maps: how to get to the English and American Studies Building from anywhere on campus; how to get to the campus by road, rail, air, Eurostar, and ferry. I smoked and paced. I felt safe at the university. That was it: that was why I had gone there. But only because there are always so many people there. You never feel alone at the university, and, usually, in dangerous situations you want to be around people. Not this time.

  Three or four minutes passed. I heard laughter moving down the corridor: Max and the others, no doubt, coming back from the bar. It didn't matter that I'd locked the external doors; now they were bound to be unlocked. I looked at the heavy paperweight on my desk. Perhaps I could stop them with force? No. You can't use force against remote telepathy. I urged myself to think faster. Should I destroy the page from my shoe? I couldn't. I couldn't do it. Why had I not driven away to somewhere random when I had the chance? My thoughts pushed and shoved each other like desperate Christmas shoppers, and I reminded myself that I had only two decisions to make: what I should do with the page; and where to go next. Before I knew what I was doing I had reached up to the very top shelf for the fourth volume of Zoonomia. I used to hide money in books a long time ago when I was a research student and my front door was almost as flimsy as a curtain and anyone could open it with a credit card. I reasoned that thieves aren't interested in books, and anyway, books are bulky. If you were a petty thief you wouldn't be able to transport a thousand or so books. So you'd ignore them: You wouldn't select, say, ten to steal. You'd ignore them all and focus on the VCR and the microwave. For that reason I've always hidden things in random books. I've hidden love letters, pornography, credit cards.... Would this work now? These Project Starlight men did clearly know the value of books. Ah, I thought, but this is where the university will help me. I can hide the page and lock the door and no stranger is going to be able to come and look through my things. And even if someone did manage to do that, the book they want wouldn't seem to be here.

  And then I thought, How long am I going to be away?

  I had no idea.

  But at least I would be carrying only one copy of the information I had: the copy in my mind. And, although I knew I'd be too much of a coward, I could always kill myself if the men got too close. That was my theoretical last resort. I got a chair to stand on to relieve myself of the second copy of the information I held: the page in my shoe.

  Perhaps it was stupid of me; perhaps I hadn't thought it through—but I could not imagine anyone going through all the books on my shelf and shaking them until a mysterious page fell out. I thought that by doing this I was preserving an important page of an important book. Why Zoonomia? I wasn't sure exactly, but something in my mind told me this was the right book. Ariel Manto wouldn't be using it: I'd told her not to. And who else would be interested in Zoonomia? I inserted the page somewhere in the middle of Volume IV and replaced it on the shelf.

  I knew I shouldn't have done it, but I did it anyway rather than destroy the page. Was this my fatal flaw? And perhaps I thought that anyone who knew Zoonomia—an academic, definitely—and who also had the wherewithal to make the connection between the page and the book ... Well, good luck to them. Perhaps that's how I justified it to myself. Knowing what I know now, I would never have left the page behind. But I can't get it now. All I can hope is that it's been destroyed.

  So the next thing I had to do was disappear. But how to disappear in a building full of people in a university campus full of people in a world full of people? Where could I go? Where could I go that no one else would go? Where could I be unseen?

  The railway tunnel.

  In two minutes I was out of my office and in the photocopying room, with the door locked behind me. It was surprisingly easy to lift the hatch, now I knew it was there. I had no torch; just a small key ring light. But it was enough for me to see a thin metallic ladder. Had I lost my mind? I wasn't at all sure. But, as I lowered myself into the gloom below, and carefully replaced the hatch above my head, I heard the sound of furious banging, and a male, American voice shouting, "Professor Burlem!" They were at my office door across the corridor. But I was gone. No one had seen me go into the photocopying room. I felt as though I'd broken some loop; some chain of seeing and cause and effect. If I didn't emerge, no one would ever know where I was. If no one could see me, did I even exist?

  The tunnel was dark and cold, with a persistent drip, drip, drip noise. It was much bigger than I had imagined—but then, of course, a railway tunnel is big: big enough for two trains to go through. It was too dark to see any detail, but I got the impression of size from the way sound travelled through the space. I walked in a direction I believed to be south, towards the underneath of the Newton Building. My feet crunched on something that felt like gravel, but I couldn't see beneath my feet. I used the wall to guide myself, and hoped that I was moving far enough away from the Project Starlight men that the sleeping one wouldn't simply chance on me in the Troposphere. I imagined something like a dawn raid: If the men knew I was at the university, could the sleeping one just burst into all the dwellings in the Troposphere until he found mine? This was the thought that bothered me as I walked farther into the tunnel. I already knew that so much about telemancy and Pedesis had to do with proximity. But then again, there'd be so many consciousnesses here on campus, and the men couldn't even be sure I was anywhere near here. I didn't know what to do next. As if some vengeful god
had decided to play a trick on me, the next thing that happened was that I came to a halt before what felt like a pile of bricks and rubble. I knew I would have to clear a path to get through to the exit. Did I want to get to the exit? I sank to the floor and began to think about what I would do next.

  Ah. Enough reminiscing. There's the church. I'll tie Planck up outside.

  I'm...

  Oh fuck. That's it. I'm out in the Troposphere: bounced out by Burlem going into the church. So Adam was right about that, then.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I'm standing on a long, metal bridge over a vast river that rushes below me. It's still nighttime here, but everything is death-kissed with a silvery glow that seems like moonlight (although I can see no moon), and every structure, including this bridge, seems to be strung with lights that are reflected in, and then slashed up by, the violent black water below. In the real world I'd feel vertigo immediately, but here in the Troposphere it's just that syrupy nothingness. You have to get a lot more emotional than this for anything to register in the Troposphere (or, as it seems to have been termed in Project Starlight—MindSpace). Yet I can feel some things. I'm disappointed about being bounced out here when I was surely about to discover exactly where Burlem went after he emerged from the tunnel. But that's it: mild disappointment. Outside I'd feel a lot more.

  Outside. How do I get out, exactly? Presumably I have to find my way back to the place I started: the end of the street with the doll's houses and the crazy mannequins: the Tropospherical (is that a word? It is now.) representation of the Hertfordshire village where my physical body is now still lying, crashed out in the pub.

  How long have I been in here?

  Console?

  It appears. Where am I?

  Your major coordinates are 14, 12, 5, –2, 9 and 400,340.

  For fuck's sake. What does that mean? What's a major coordinate?

  Coordinates tell you where you are in the Troposphere.

  Yes, but ... What do they relate to?

  All points in the Troposphere are calculated relative to the position of your living consciousness in the physical world. I can provide the coordinates in binary notation instead if you require.

  No thanks. OK. So I'm not far from where I should be? Or am I?

  Distance is time, as you know.

  I have a feeling this thing only tells me what I already know. Go on, I tell it, anyway.

  You have travelled a great distance, relative to your previous journeys.

  So how do I get back?

  You return to coordinates 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, and 1.

  How do I do that?

  You travel across the Troposphere.

  Is there any other information you can give me?

  You now have three hundred choices.

  Great. Can you give me any actual directions?

  The screen flickers. I see something that looks like a ring doughnut made into a giant spiral, with lines and cubes hanging off it. But in less than a second this has gone and I am instead presented with something like an ordnance survey map with a blue dot and the legend You Are Here. I ask the console to show me where my target location is and a red dot appears, miles and miles away.

  But I'm not even sure you measure distance in miles here.

  And another thing. When I left Hertfordshire it was January. But in Burlem's mind it wasn't even Christmas yet. Did I actually travel back in time to get to Burlem? But why? How on earth would that work? I start walking across the bridge, a humid, gray wind blowing my hair around my face. Oh, no; not more weather. I can do without weather. I think it's a bad sign in here.

  Apollo Smintheus?

  Nothing.

  It takes me about ten minutes (or whatever the equivalent is in here) to get to the end of the bridge. I look behind me and see something like a fan of bridges behind me, gleaming in the silver light. When I look, it quickly collapses back into one bridge. Ten minutes, I think. Ten minutes multiplied by 1.6 is sixteen minutes. Is that right? So in crossing that bridge I've just spent another sixteen minutes in the Troposphere? I have to get out of here. My body is just lying there in the hotel room. Come on, Ariel. Faster.

  But something tells me that faster may not even make any difference.

  I'm now standing on a wide road that reminds me, in some way, of the Embankment in London, except that it seems to go on forever in either direction. The other strange thing is that the road does not have big, grand houses and hotels. Instead there are little cottages everywhere, arranged in a haphazard way: some on top of the other, some with three-dimensional edges. What? Don't be silly, Ariel: Three-dimensional edges don't exist. Except in four spatial dimensions, my mind reminds me. Oh God. I turn left and keep walking. I notice smoke coming out of some of the chimneys, but the smoke doesn't curl upwards, like smoke should do. As well as expanding into three-dimensional space, the smoke also seems to be curling in on itself, out of itself, and moving in some other directions I don't have the names for. As I walk, the large Embankment turns, improbably, into a dust track, with caravans scattered around and cardboard chickens everywhere. Hang on. Cardboard chickens? What's happening to me? There's a flash in the sky, like lightning, and then dawn starts to break, but much faster than it would normally. I feel so tired. I could just crawl into one of those caravans and sleep for a while maybe. No. Don't be so silly, Ariel: If you go inside one of those things there'll just be another mind with more thoughts and more memories. For the first time, this knowledge makes me feel exhausted. Now the sun is up, and I'm walking in a bright yellow desert, with giant sand castles popping up everywhere and then disappearing again. What the hell is this the equivalent of? All this is a metaphor, right? Well, what—or where—is the fucking reality that goes with this?

  The desert seems to last for hours, but I have no real sense of time in here. The ten minutes I sensed on the bridge could have been three, or one, or twenty. All I know is that each footstep may as well be the ticking second hand of some cosmic clock and the closer I get to myself the farther away I get from any chance of surviving this. I emerge from the desert and onto another dust track, which contains various diners in blue and pink neon. Is the neon a good sign? Should I be pleased that it's back? The sun is going down again, too fast, like the evening of the end of the world. There's a dusty petrol station on one side of the street. If only I could fuel myself there. The air is still humid, and nothing's happened as a result of the lightning: no rain, no thunder. And I'm walking in what must be my own mind, lost inside my ideas and assumptions about what and who everyone else is. I don't know where "I" am. And the red dot in the console isn't getting perceptibly closer.

  Apollo Smintheus?

  Nothing.

  Apollo Smintheus? I'll do anything.... Please come and help me.

  Another soundless crack in the sky. Now I think I know what praying is. I walk on another two or three steps, but I seem to be fading. I don't think I can go any farther. There's a rumble in the distance. Thunder? I fall to my knees.

  Apollo Smintheus?

  And then I see him, like a mirage. A mirage on ... a red scooter?

  "Well," he says as he pulls up next to me.

  There's a cloud of pale brown dust, and then it settles.

  "I thought you weren't coming back," I say.

  "I wasn't."

  "But you are back. You are here. I'm not just seeing things?"

  Apollo Smintheus smiles. "Of course you're just seeing things. But that doesn't mean I'm not here." He looks at his watch. "You're in trouble. Let's have a coffee."

  He leaves his scooter in the middle of the dust track and walks towards one of the neon diners. I follow him, but every step feels soggy, as though I'm moving underwater in all my clothes. As we get closer to the diner I realize that it's called Mus Musculus, and instead of a door it has the same arch as Apollo Smintheus's house. The inside is like an amalgamation of every American road movie I've ever seen: red leatherette booths, laminated menus, big glass containers o
f sugar with silver spouts that deliver one spoonful when you tip them up. The tables are white Formica. In one corner is the same nest I saw back at the place next to the pool hall somewhere, I imagine, on the other side of the Troposphere.

  "Well," Apollo Smintheus says again.

  I look over at the counter. There aren't any staff here. Above the left-hand edge of the counter there's a TV screen attached with a bracket. It's switched off. There's a big white digital clock on the wall just behind it to the right, but whatever time it's telling isn't familiar to me. First it reads 82.5; then 90.1; then 85.5; then 89.7. It pulses irregularly, which is why I assume it can't be a clock. When I look back to the table, there's a white cup filled with brown liquid. Oh well, if I'm going to die I may as well drink some Troposphere coffee first. And I don't have the energy for much more than drinking coffee, anyway. I want to delay this trip across the Troposphere as long as possible. I can't believe I've been this stupid. I can't believe I'm lost in my own mind. Is this what madness feels like? Probably best not to think too much about that.